Whew. Today I exhibited more patience than I knew I had, and finally triumphed over the maze of confusion known as AT&T/Direct TV customer support. I win.
My actual reward is a glass of lemonade. I deserve it, too.
You see, last week our DirectTV stopped working. I called to get repairs scheduled, because Lee is easily annoyed with service providers. I believed I had it scheduled for today.
In the meantime, we joined the modern world, and hooked the Apple TV up so we could watch television on it. Well, except that DirectTV and Disney are quarreling again, so we had to watch ABC on the antenna.
Over the weekend we used streaming, which we’d been avoiding due to our rural bandwidth issues. It feels so modern to watch football on Peacock and Tulsa King on Paramount +. Kathleen will be very proud of us.
Then came today. No repair person showed. So, I dialed the number someone had left in a text. It was a magic number. It let me actually get help and service. In a mere 2.5 hours I got all my telecommunications needs met. It was a LONG 2.5 hours.
First I talked to a nice woman who determined that no repair person came because there is ONE technician in our area (Waco) and they got injured last week. Apparently they tried calling me but it came up as Spam Risk so I didn’t answer, and they didn’t leave messages. Grr. DirectTV is looking for a substitute, but as of now, I have no prospect of getting the dish realigned.
Next, I talked to a billing guy. He was hard to understand, but tried to figure out my bill and my two different accounts. What he accomplished was to get money taken off our bill since we have no satellite. He was also able to tell me what phone numbers were associated with our account. Holy cow, there were eight. Four phones, a hotspot, two watches, and a “device” of some kind. That was unsatisfactory. I now understood why Lee said the phone bill was so high. That had to change. But billing guy couldn’t do that.
That fellow successfully transferred me to a very nice young woman who works for the mobility department, which is extra separate from the television department, the billing department, and the internet department. This woman and I spent at least an hour straightening things out. The bill is now halved, with fewer gigs on the RV hotspot, only phones for me and my children (yes, even the uncommunicative one), and no watches. We determined they don’t need to have their own numbers. I’d been trying to get these things cancelled for months, but the “helpful” app wouldn’t let me get to my phone info.
Modern life is hard.
I did enjoy talking to the agent about camping, Native American history, and the weird weather lately. That’s what happens when you’re kind to the people on the phone. She worked hard to fix my account, too.
However, she could not help with my final issue, which was to get the wifi setup cancelled on the Red House, since we aren’t renting it out anymore. That was a different department. So she transferred me and because the system only wanted to give me a call back on my landline from when I lived in Round Rock, I had to wait on hold.
That’s okay, I spent 15 minutes weeding nut grass in the pool flower bed. This made the next customer support lady laugh when I told her I had to crawl out of the flower bed to find my account number. But by gosh, she was able to cancel that account! All I have to do is return the equipment. Ugh.
Still, I did it! I finally got the right people to help me, didn’t get disconnected, and didn’t lose my cool. This is a true sign of modern competency.
The Hermits' Rest 